About six months ago, I launched an ambitious idea related to the release of Personality Not Included called The Personality Project. My idea was to collect 100 of the most visionary minds in marketing, art and business and invite them all to contribute a single blog post to a collaborative group blog. I launched the site at www.thepersonalityproject.com and had a brilliant initial list of folks agree to participate. For several months, the content was great … I had posts from Dave Balter of BzzAgent, Premal Shah from Kiva.org and many others. Then I ran out of time to recruit new entries and follow up on them. The content was getting old, I had no new posts and my great idea was rapidly dying and I just didn’t have the time to save it.
So over the last few months, I started to think about how I could bring the site back to life – and even whether I should. Along the way, I had an interview with my good friend Scott Jordan and added him to the project as the first video entry. Looking at my calendar of events coming up in the Fall, I realized that I would be meeting many of the people who I was pursuing to participate in the project in person. Getting them to take the time to write an entry may be an uphill battle, but surely I could grab five minutes of their time and do a video interview? Video is a lot easier to capture, more engaging and real, and frankly … can have more personality than words written on a page if done right.
So at Blogworld Expo a few weeks ago, I tried the experiment out and captured several people on video. Once I did, I realized that the solution to my questoin of saving the Personality Project was simple – convert it to a video blog. I’ll still feature written contributions and have a few coming up, but for the most part the new entries on the site will be a series of video interviews all exploring the same topic: why personality matters. Check out my latest video – a conversation from this past weekend with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and look for lots more content over the next few weeks and months until I hit 100. Let me know what you think!
Rohit – I got your link when the post I wrote went live… if I recall correctly, none of the guest posts had links back to the writers’ sites. Maybe there would have been more momentum if the links were there. I forgot to bookmark it.
Another thought – not that you were asking 😉 – was to build a viral component to the site. Invite people who contributed to ask other people they knew as passionate about branding and personality to contribute. A sort of “pay it forward” mechanism.
Video works because it does not feel like work – most of the time. Great idea!
All I have to say is that I’m jealous. I <3 LP
Rohit — cool to hear about this. I’m glad PP’s not dead! I emailed you some weeks ago about the Personality Project because I want to contribute, but I didn’t hear back.
I’d love to share how personality matters in the virtual world of Second Life, where I’m avatar-centric and expressing oneself has a numbers of very memorable layers not possible in the so-called real world.
Did you see my email? 🙂
@Valeria – Great point, I need to go back and do that consistently. I’m going to try and work on your other ideas as well.
@Tim – Yup, he was great and it was a major thrill to meet and share the stage with him.
@Torley – I’d be honored to have you participate, I’ll email you directly to coordinate.